There are a LOT of different coping mechanisms we all use to get through a crisis. For me, my go-to place for breathing out my problems has been the seaside. Lucky for me, I’ve always lived by the coast (occupational hazard), which has made it very convenient when I need to throw my problems out to sea.
These days, with a firm shelter in place order from the Powers That Be, my vitamin sea is harder to access. But, as it turns out, when you can’t go to the ocean, you can bring the ocean to you. Either in the form of the most perfect sea-shell printed vintage dress from Pickled Vintage, or in the form of an art project that has been percolating in the back of your mind since you and the Mister bought your home…
Mr Dressed and I joke to our friends that ours is a House For Tall People. With me at 5’9 and Mr. D at 6’2, we bemoan low ceilings and countertops that never feel high enough. Walking into this house for the first time, it was like a breath of fresh air. Giants surely built this place. Each room on its own has an impressive 12 foot ceiling (even the laundry room. Someone was very committed to height). But, the main living room has these gorgeous, even higher vaulted ceilings, with windows on nearly every wall flooding this space with light. It was the feature that sold the house for us.
However, enter the challenge of decorating those expansive walls, which seem to stretch on up to the atmosphere. We went back and forth for ages, tying to imagine buying several art pieces to fill the wall. We have one beautiful shark photograph by Thomas Peschak that I won for a presentation I gave at a shark conference years ago. We had professionally framed and it’s absolutely stunning – one of the largest piece we own. But it too would look dwarfed on this wall, diminutive in the expanse of grey.
So, about a year and a half ago we came up with a plan – what if we didn’t add more and more framed art? What if we made the shark photo the center of an art piece? As we have a bit of a mid-century-meets-aquatic thing going on in our house (sounds weird, but makes total sense when you meet us), we decided to embrace the sea and go underwater.
We opted to design a fish shape that we would have laser cut out of a thin plywood and affix a ton of them to the wall, as if a school of fish were moving through our living room. And months and months went by without much progress – there were always other things to do. But suddenly, we found ourselves with no places to go, and no people to see…
So, with weeks of social isolation before us, we turned to our computers and set about making the design. Turns out, designing fish to look random but intentional is quite the challenge. After many, many attempts, we had sketches we were happy with.
We found the perfect company to work with – Craft Cut Concepts. They were able to take our design and cut our series of fish in 3 different sizes. The order arrived on our doorstep in exactly 1 week from order and were absolutely perfect. No sanding of any edge was required and the sizing was to our measurements within the mm.
We knew we wanted a bit of color in the design, but didn’t want it to be overwhelming. So, we opted to paint the fish in shades of black, navy, and deep teal, with a few small pops of orange. After weighing our options, from paintbrushes to rollers, we realized the easiest way to paint 200 fish was to use spray paint. Luckily, we found the exact colors we were after and were able to get all of the painting done in a weekend. Nothing like a bit of social isolation to motivate you!
The way the living room is set up, we have one wall that vaults from floor to ceiling and a second wall on the opposite side that vaults from halfway up (above the kitchen). So, we designed a smaller school to swim across the second wall, with a larger, more expansive school zooming through the shark photo opposite. Because we really weren’t sure how this was going to turn out, we started with the small wall first.
Our original (brilliant) plan was to borrow a projector from work and project the design onto the wall, where we could just affix each fish on top of the projection. Well, coronavirus and all. So, we had to come up with a Plan B. It was important not to just jump in with the fish, because we needed to get a sense of scale and be able to make minor adjustments before we committed. So, we started by sectioning the wall into equal quadrants and set to work trying to get the plan in place…
The magic solution? Post-its! Each fish got assigned a post-it color and we worked one quadrant at a time, placing the post-its where we approximated the fish should be. Working down the wall and following our sketch, we created the swirling shoal, making minor tweaks but overall very happy with the shape.
There were a lot of different ways to adhere the fish – we looked into magnets, tape, using nails. In the end, my mom gave us the best idea: crazy strong Nano tape! We watched many YouTube videos on the stuff and, while the promise that things can be easily removed from the tape are doubtful, it seemed they held up bricks with aplomb. So, we were pretty confident it could hold up our fish.
We attached a small piece of tape to the back of each fish (Public Service Announcement: this is the strongest tape in the WORLD. Do not let it touch anything unless you want it stuck there permanently). Then, following a sea of colorful post-its to light the way, we attached each fish one by one until the school started to come to life before our eyes.
Now, I know that we planned it all out and that Mr. Dressed and I are pretty smart people, but we were both shocked it came out so well! I think both us us were expecting something to go awry, but we were absolutely in love with the effect, with a little goldfish leading the charge.
Bolstered by the success of the smaller wall, we decided to tackle the Big Cahoona. One Saturday morning, bright and early, we decided we were ready for the challenge.
With the large photo in place, the next step was going to be planning the fish placement. We had our design, but knew we couldn’t simply divide the wall into fourths. There were just too many fish. So, we set up a grid system on the wall to the left and right of the photo using painters tape. This way, we would work one grid square at a time, and not be overwhelmed by how huge the entirety of the art piece was.
As before, we turned to our old friend, the mighty Post-It. One by one, we added the post-its in each grid where the fish would be, tweaking and adjusting until we started to see the shape of the shoal come to life. This took a considerably long time – it was three times as large as the first design and required more than twice as many fish.
Mr. D got a serious workout moving up and down the ladder, as I handed him the color-coded posits and stood back to direct their placement. Just as before, working from left to right, eventually we had a wall of post-its coding our design. It was kind of like paint by numbers, if you could paint with wooden fish.
Adhering the fish went remarkably fast – the hardest part is always the planning, and the execution felt easy once we were confident in our fish placement. We zipped from left to right and bottom to top, affixing the fish in each grid square. As each post-it fell to be replaced by a fish, I felt more and more excited to see this idea come to life.
And before I knew it, we were done. Living in our undersea world. Protected from the wind and waves and storms raging above. It was definitely one of those times when I reaffirmed with absolute certainty that Mr. Dressed is my person. The way we will have a collective vision for something, and simply see it through without question. Even if the idea is impossible, we just believe it will come to fruition, and make it happen.
I love this wall. And when people visit again at some stage in the (near?) future, it’ll be VERY clear that a marine biologist lives in this house!
With a seashell dress on my back and a fish wall in my home, I’m already feeling the calm. Waking up to this piece every morning has reminded me that even when I can’t get to the sea, the ocean is never very far away. It’s true of my life and most definitely true of my wardrobe…
It’s been a really crazy four weeks – they’ve dragged by and flew past at the same time, as we’ve all adjusted to my new normal. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to teaching online. I miss being able to interact with my students, see their faces when I find the exact right way to explain something, or train my grad students in some new technique. I miss seeing my colleagues daily, and getting to share in our unapologetic nerdery. Mostly, I miss the life we had, and can only hope we can all get back to it soon.
At least I no longer have to miss the sea…
xoxo
Outfit Details:
Dress: Pickled Vintage (similar modern or vintage here, here & here)
Belt: Altar’d State
Brooch: gift, Erstwilder (similar)
Handbag: gift (similar)
Shoes: Modcloth (similar here & here)
Lip Color: Dior Rouge 634
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Any items marked with a “c/o” (courtesy of) a retailer mean I was provided with an item for free in exchange for a review and/or feature on my blog. I always provide my honest opinion of any item I’m reviewing, regardless of whether it was sent to me as a courtesy item or if I purchased it myself. In addition, this post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click and/or make a purchase through certain links or ads on this site, I may make a commission from that click and/or purchase at no cost to you, which helps with the day-to-day running costs of my blog.